“Got another letter, chummy,” said he, “come in yesterday. She tells me,” he hesitated with a blush, and then a happy laugh, “that they ain't going to be only two of us at the farm next year.”
“You mean!” queried Thorpe.
“Yes,” laughed Paul, “and if it's a girl she gets named after her mother, you bet.”
The men separated. In a moment Thorpe found himself waist-deep in the pitchy aromatic top of an old bull-sap, clipping away at the projecting branches. After a time he heard Paul's gay halloo.
“TimBER!” came the cry, and then the swish-sh-sh,—CRASH of the tree's fall.
Thorpe knew that now either Hank or Tom must be climbing with the long measuring pole along the prostrate trunk, marking by means of shallow ax-clips where the saw was to divide the logs. Then Tom shouted something unintelligible. The other men seemed to understand, however, for they dropped their work and ran hastily in the direction of the voice. Thorpe, after a moment's indecision, did the same. He arrived to find a group about a prostrate man. The man was Paul.
Two of the older woodsmen, kneeling, were conducting coolly a hasty examination. At the front every man is more or less of a surgeon.
“Is he hurt badly?” asked Thorpe; “what is it?”
“He's dead,” answered one of the other men soberly.
With the skill of ghastly practice some of them wove a litter on which the body was placed. The pathetic little procession moved in the solemn, inscrutable forest.